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Re: Pronunciation of Station Names



Thanks for your reply Geoff. I take it you received a blank message.
Just recently as I've run out of disk space - only a few megabytes
spare I have been encountering this problem. It appears Communicator
4.04 dosen't warn when there is no space to write temp files. (My temp
file is on D drive), it just sends a blank message without telling
anyone except the reciver. Most annoying.

Here is what I said.

In relation to Llanfair pronunciation, I wasn;t saying they were wrong
with what they said, but simply making it very complex and hard to
understand. What I said is the accepted comparison in South Wales. In
North Wales, "thl" is extremely close if not the same as to how it is
said. You pronouse the "th" as in "the" pronunced with the soft ending
"u".

Listening to the sound file you can here the "thl" sound at the
beginning. What they were telling you with "clan" was the sounding of
the "an", not the llan. The verbose description of how to make the
"ll" was unnecessary.

The "virtue" of  true Welsh people is that if an Englishman appears
they immediate speak Welsh and give directions in a convoluted hard to
follow way. (You may have noticed that with some of my postings. Its
inherited.) Hence that verbose description of making a "thl" sound.

As to the pronunciation of Llandudno. What I said is quite correct.
However, you can't show speed of saying and the fact that Welsh is
"sung" rather than spoken. Say what I wrote at the correct speed -
extremely fast with a modulated voice rather than an English  monotone
and you will get the sound you have heard. That is another secret
Welsh keep to themselves.

A further complication is that the English tried to drive Welsh out of
existance and it only survived in the Valleys and hills, and not so
much in the cities, especially  South Wales. It is only recently been
re-introduced into the education system and a lot of the dialets have
disappeared and it is tending to become more "Anglicised" through the
last 100 years odd of English being spoken. It is a hasrd language to
master unless you were brought up on it from early childhood. The
result is many teachers of Welsh do not themselves speak real Welsh,
but rather a recently learned standardised versiion. In some areas of
Australia it has actually survived better than in parts of Wales.

Sorry for rambling on in this thread, but it is pertinent to Welsh
station name pronunciations.

Returning to Llanfair, the prise for saying it correctly used to be a
beer at the pub. No one to my knowledge every claimed the prize
including other Welsh speaking Welshmen. (local people excepted).

Cheers

Garry